How often does google maps update traffic data

Today, Google Maps contain information, ratings, and reviews of about million places around the world. But what happens when a building does not have a traditional address. A Plus Code is an address based on the latitude and longitude coordinates of a location. Each code is 10 characters long and consists of two parts: an area code roughly x kilometers and a local code about 14 x 14 meters. The code can also be combined with a locality. The biggest advantage of Plus Codes is that unlike other alternate addressing systems available today, they are open-source and free-to-use.

There are no licensing fees or other costs. Read more about Plus Codes here. When Google Maps turned 15 on February 8, , Senior VP Jen Fitzpatrick acknowledged what a gargantuan, never-ending task it is to create a truly helpful map.

The real world is infinitely detailed and always changing, so our work of reflecting it back to you is never done. Now read: Google Maps vs. Apple Maps: Report card of a year-long comparison. See: How often do Google Maps get updated? You cannot expect them to show real-time […]. My house is not in google satellite and I have lived here since , so at least 13 years with no update. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Geoawesomeness is a blog about geospatial technologies and everything awesome around it.

That said, it appears that Google Maps ignores when lots of users are at a standstill. Interestingly, not all vehicles are treated equally. Google Maps can tell the difference between a car, motorcycle, and other vehicles at least in certain countries and regions. Google Maps also updates traffic reports based on user input in addition to passive, anonymized location and movement tracking to help keep conditions updated. Accidents, construction zones, speed traps, and other alerts can all be reported in Google Maps, and the more users that report an alert help it show up faster on the map for others and potentially help them avoid slowdowns and find better routes if necessary.

Dave Barth explained the entire process in an official blog post. Dave says that Google does not get to know the identity of the vehicle in which the phone is traveling nor do they get any information about the people inside the vehicle.

To further protect the privacy, Google deletes a few minutes of data from the start and end of a trip. As a result, Google does not know the origin or destination of your trip. Google also has algorithms that can exclude anomalies like a postman stopping more often on a route to deliver letters.

These algorithms will find out and exclude the such cases. Thus a frequently stopping postman will not trigger a traffic congestion alarm in Google Maps. Once Google gets enough data to make an opinion about the traffic situation on a road, it begins painting. If the traffic is going smooth on a road, Google Maps paint the road with green color. Slow traffic is marked with yellow color and traffic jams are indicated by red color.

Severe traffic jams are indicated by deep red maroon color. When Google does not have enough data about traffic conditions on a road, it offers you to show the typical traffic on that location at that particular time. This tells us that Google saves the traffic conditions on roads in its database and use this information as a learning tool.

Yes, there is a privacy concern involved in this approach of data gathering. Google knows a lot about us. Nevertheless, Google has provided an option to opt-out and not share your location related data with Google.

So, this is the secret behind the mind-boggling traffic update feature of the Google Maps. I hope you like this article.

Please feel free to share your viewpoint on this topic. Have you opted-out of sharing your location related data? Do let us know in the comments section.